


XIII. Death

by PostcardsfromTheoryland



Series: April Tarot Card Prompts [7]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Keith and Shiro actually have a goddamn conversation, Post-Episode: s07e01 A Little Adventure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:40:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23541724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PostcardsfromTheoryland/pseuds/PostcardsfromTheoryland
Summary: Death: End of a period of life, renewal, change, transitionShiro, waking up as a new man in the aftermath of S6.
Relationships: Keith & Shiro (Voltron)
Series: April Tarot Card Prompts [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686346
Comments: 9
Kudos: 53





	XIII. Death

The first thing Shiro did after getting out of the pod was to just...breathe. To spend an hour or so relearning what it felt like to exist on a physical plane again.

Well, actually, the first thing he had done was to take a goddamn _nap_. Keith had insisted he rest in the Black Lion with the wolf draped over his legs, and Shiro was pretty sure that was just so Keith would have two different warning systems in place if anything went wrong, but given how they’d gotten to this point, Shiro couldn’t really blame him for being the slightest bit overly concerned.

It was strangely quiet when he woke, his hand idly scratching the wolf’s mane, and he just let himself...be, as he got used to this new body and this renewed existence, as he tried to place what it was that was missing in the quiet. It took him nearly an hour, but he figured it out in the end.

The Black Lion.

He’d gotten so used to their presence in his head, existing within their conscious, but now that connection had been completely severed. He could hear the mechanisms whirring, all the Lion’s systems while they were at rest, but nothing else.

He really wasn’t the Black Paladin anymore.

He could still support the paladins, he knew. He and Coran would always have their backs, but this was just another reminder of how things had changed, a reminder of how the paladins, the team he had left behind, had all grown _so much_ in his absence. Pidge, who defied the odds and found both her brother and her father. Hunk, who faced his fears and protected the people he cared about. Allura, who had gone from a princess in her castle to a warrior on the battlefield. Lance, who had stepped up to hold the team together. And Keith, who had become every bit the leader Shiro knew he could be.

He didn’t have the clone's memories, exactly. But he still remembered everything. It was like he’d watched a film of everything that had happened when the clone was masquerading as him, and he was going to have a lot of apologies to make in the coming days, from dismissing Lance’s concerns, to directly ignoring Allura’s suggestions, to holding Keith to an impossible standard and pushing him into the Blade of Marmora and then trying to kill him on that clone base; then of course there was the whole thing where his clone had tried to blow up the entire castle.

He could begin now. He’d rested, so he could take over the watch from whoever was still awake. It was a tiny gesture, but it was a start.

He felt unbalanced, without the arm, but it was bearable, and losing the arm was certainly preferable to losing Keith. The wolf (who really needed a name, but he wasn’t going to push) whined at him as he got up and then sprawled over into the now-vacant space on Shiro’s makeshift bed.

“Yeah, go ahead,” Shiro said. “You’ve probably earned a nap, too.”

It was still the small hours of the morning, and it was hard to make out exactly who was who in the feeble, pre-dawn light, but he recognized the silhouette sitting upright a few feet away. Shiro felt another stab of guilt at the thought of the still-fresh burn on Keith’s face, and for all the bruises and aches he knew Keith was hiding. He and the clone had destroyed that base in their attempts to stop each other, and though the pod had healed Shiro’s injuries, Keith hadn’t been afforded the same luxury.

Keith looked up from the knife in his hands as Shiro approached, offering him a soft “hey” before focusing again on his hands. Whittling, Shiro realized.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” he offered.

“Yeah, well, you pick up a few random skills when you’re stuck on a space whale for two years in the quantum abyss,” Keith deadpanned, and there was a whole month’s worth of stories right there that Shiro was desperate to learn, but they had time now. The trip back to earth would give him the opportunity to reconnect, to rebuild the relationship he’d once had with all of them, but especially with Keith.

In the meantime, he lifted his arm in invitation, and Keith hesitated for only a moment before he accepted. He mourned the loss of his right arm, just a little bit, wishing he could have given Keith a proper embrace, but this was still nice. After existing on the astral plane for so long, having a physical body tucked up next to him was...a relief, to say the least.

“I missed you,” Keith sighed. “I didn’t really understand why, but now it makes a lot more sense.”

“I’m sorry,” Shiro tried, knowing that wasn’t nearly enough, “for what happened to you, for what he… _I_ said and did to you. Not just at the base, but everything leading up to it, too. I’m glad you managed to find your mom out here, but I hope you know that I never would have let you out of my sight, not in the middle of a war.”

But Keith just shook his head. “You don’t need to apologize for that. It wasn’t you. Took me a while, but I figured it out eventually.”

“Still. None of that was a burden you should have had to bear.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Keith said, “you know, for the whole arm thing.”

“And _you_ don’t need to apologize for that. He was trying to kill you. He would have, if you hadn’t figured out how to stop him.” He pressed Keith closer, needing to feel that he was ok, that he was here and relatively unharmed. “Besides, I can finally answer that stupid philosophy riddle about the sound of one hand clapping.”

“Ugh, you’re ridiculous,” Keith complained, but there was definitely a smile in his voice, and Shiro counted that as a win.

“I am so, _so_ proud of you, Keith,” he whispered, and Keith heaved out a sigh that seemed just a bit unsteady toward the end. “I hope you know that.”

“I’m just glad it all worked out,” he finally said. “Or, well, most of it. Wish we still had the castle. And the beds,” he admitted.

“I’ve got you. You should rest,” Shiro murmured.

“I’m ok for a little bit longer,” he said, even as he leaned more of his weight against Shiro’s side.

And Shiro was content. To sit in the grass and smell the start of the morning dew. To feel Keith gradually nod off against his shoulder. To watch the sun rise on an unfamiliar planet.

To breathe.


End file.
